Initiation, Eternity and the Passing Moment

Schmidt Number: S-2621

On-line since: 6th July, 2002

Lecture IV.

Munich, August 28, 1912

In order to fulfil the aims of this short course, we shall need the
ideas gained in our last lecture along with others if we are to
characterise what was alluded to in the lecture of the day before
yesterday.

In literature you will find everywhere where mention is made of
initiation that the riddle of death, so closely concerning all
mankind, is, in some way or another, touched upon. In anything of the
nature of records you will find allusions to how at a certain stage
the initiate has to experience, in a somewhat different form, how the
passing is made through the gate of death. To the occultist these
records are actually founded on truth. The experiences that have to be
passed through during the ascent into spiritual worlds are akin to the
experiences man must undergo in the natural crossing from life in the
physical body to the entirely different sheath found between death and
a new birth. If we would come to the essence of this matter in the
right way, we must first ask what man knows about himself in ordinary
life. Such an abstract question may not be of much interest, but for
an understanding of what takes place in initiates, it is necessary to
focus one's attention on the question, “What does the soul
consider itself to be?”

During sleep the soul does not know what it is because sleep runs its
course either in a state of unconsciousness, or dreams play into it,
which, to be rightly understood must be interpreted by the occultist.
So, in considering the questions, “What is man? What is his soul
in ordinary sense existence?” we have to do only with waking
life. Now we know that in the first place there are the gateways we
call our sense organs, through which the world of light and colour,
sound and smell, the world of heat and cold, and so forth, stream into
our souls. In the life of the senses what we call “our
world” is really only a gathering up of all that streams in
through these sensory gateways. Then we have the instruments of our
understanding, our feeling and willing, with which to work on what
meets us in the outer world. Within our soul cravings and desires
arise, strivings, states of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, joy,
disillusion, and so on. Were we to envisage the whole compass of what
man recognises as himself, it is all this. If we want to know what the
“inner world” is in ordinary life, we can in reality put
forward nothing more than the whole of what has just been described.
Moreover, man can also look at himself from outside. He can observe
his own body. Through countless facts that need not here be dealt with
in detail, he becomes aware that he must regard his body as the
instrument for his waking life between birth and death. We have
already touched upon the longings that play into this life. Among them
is a longing to know what man really is within the limits of birth and
death, the longing to issue forth from what may be called the darkness
of life. But man has no direct experience in his ordinary life of the
senses of how to do this. His experiences are such that the ebb and
flow of impulses, cravings, sense impressions, ideas, intellectual
connections, and so forth, completely fill his waking life. We can now
link this to what was occupying us at the end of our last lecture.

Attention was then drawn to the way in which man, on reaching the
boundary between sense existence and spirit existence, has to alter
his conceptions, how he must leave behind all his thoughts about the
ugly and beautiful, true and false, good and bad, as these concepts
take on quite another significance and a different kind of value
within the spiritual worlds. From this we can get some idea of how we
must change ourselves if we would enter these worlds. Now, having
considered what man knows of himself in waking life between birth and
death, we can ask in relation to what was said in our last lecture,
how much of all this that he knows can he take with him across the
boundary where the Guardian of the Threshold stands? How much of all
that he lives through and experiences in sense existence, in his
impulses, desires and passions, in his feelings, ideas, and the
concepts of his understanding and his judgements can he take with him
across the boundary where stands the Guardian of the Threshold? It is
in the first stages of initiation that man discovers that, of all that
constitutes man, nothing at all can be carried over! It is neither
exaggeration nor paradox but the literal truth to say that, of all
that can be mentioned as belonging to man's sensory existence, he can
carry over nothing at all into the spiritual world; everything must be
left behind at the boundary where stands the Guardian of the
Threshold.

Let us be clear on one point, however. Of all that man knows as
himself in sensory existence, one thing of the greatest importance
clings; that is, what actually has to do with the stages of
initiation. It clings in man's love of and delight in it all, to which
it is quite inappropriate to apply the usual rather unsympathetic
concept of egoism. We cannot meet the case simply by saying that a man
must lay aside his egoism in order to pass over selflessly into the
region of the spiritual world. That is easy to say. This egoism, in
the finer and more hidden parts of its nature, is intimately connected
with what we may not only egoistically hold to be of value in life,
but must hold to be of value because through it we are men in the
world in which we have to maintain ourselves. We are men through our
ability to hold together what we experience, to reflect upon it in a
certain way, and to live it through. All this makes us the men we are.
Whatever we can do worthily in the ordinary life of the senses, we
carry through because we foster this faculty of holding together what
we experience in our personality, in our individuality. If we did not
value our experience, we should become idle, dull, and achieve nothing
for the ordinary world. It would therefore be superficial to say that
egoism should always be looked upon as harmful because in its finer
composition it represents the force that drives man on in the world in
which he has incarnated. Nevertheless, all this must be laid aside; it
must remain behind and be discarded for the simple reason that it is
not suited to the world we have to enter. As our physical body is
hardly adapted for a bath in molten iron at 900 degrees centigrade,
what we call “our self,” with all that we love in ordinary
life, is ill-adapted for the spiritual world. It must be left behind;
if it were not we should experience something resembling the effect a
bath of molten iron would have on a physical body. We should not be
able to stand it but would be completely destroyed!

A thought may now occur to you that is quite natural but nevertheless
has to be grasped and felt in all its depth. This thought is, “If
I am now to lay aside all that I am, all that I can talk of in the
life of my senses, what at long last, actually remains of me? Is there
anything left of myself to enter the spiritual world if I have to cast
myself aside?” It is a fact that man can take nothing with him
into the super-sensible worlds of all that he recognises as himself;
all that he can take is something of which in the ordinary world he
knows nothing, something that is in him without his knowledge, that is
lying in the depths of his soul as the hidden elements of his being.
These must be so strong that out of them he can take into spiritual
worlds all of which he will be in need when he has to lay aside what
he knows. Thoroughly to grasp this thought, or rather this feeling,
you must connect what has just been said with the customary thoughts
about death. In ordinary sensory life it is only natural for a man to
love what he recognises as himself. Because he knows nothing further
of himself over and above his longing for immortality, he has a
longing to keep hold of what he has loved in sense existence. His
dread of the spiritual world can be so great that it becomes the acme
of fear because of the thought, “You are going where all is
unsubstantial and unknown; you do not even know whether you can
preserve yourself there because all that you know must be lost to
you!”

Now it is part of initiation that the elements of being that lie in
the hidden depths of the soul should be drawn up while still in
sensory life and brought to consciousness. This is partly achieved by
the means described in
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment,
by raising into consciousness from the depths of the soul experiences
that come forth like a condensed and strengthened soul life. This
condensed and strengthened life of soul, of which we otherwise know
nothing, can pass over into the spiritual world. We thereby prepare
ourselves by meditation and concentration, by what is called in
The Guardian of the Threshold
the “attitude of soul that is
strengthened by thought,” so that we are able to take something
with us into the spiritual world, and to be something there.

But what happens then to all we have laid aside? Now this is something
extraordinarily important. To begin with, if we would put it
pictorially, it may really be said that what one talks about in
sensory life, all that we know, is laid aside and left with the
Guardian of the Threshold at the boundary, just as if it were the
soul's clothing that was cast off before the crossing into the
spiritual world. Pictorially speaking, that is quite correct.
Initiation, however, necessitates that not only should this happen,
but something else as well. One's self and all that one has must,
indeed, be laid aside, yet something of it must be carried on. Were it
not so we should lose all connection with the one and only being of
which we were previously conscious. So, after all, something must be
carried over! We should leave everything behind and yet take something
of it with us. Here we have a contradiction, but really it is not
difficult to explain.

You will easily understand what it is to the soul to go through this
process if I compare it with a phenomenon of ordinary life. In life we
have a similar process, a process to be compared with this, although
the latter is far more intense and far more powerfully felt. It is the
process of remembering some experience we have had in life. What you
experienced yesterday is left behind, but you take it with you in your
memory. The important thing is to have sufficiently prepared
ourselves, by previous meditation, concentration and so on, so that on
crossing the threshold into the spiritual world, we have the power to
hold fast in super-sensible memory what we have left behind. If we are
not prepared in the proper way we shall not have the power of
recollection. We are then a mere nothing for our own consciousness; we
know nothing of ourselves. On entering spiritual worlds the point is
to remember through super-sensible memory what one has left behind.
These memories are all that can be taken with one. That they are so
taken, ensures the so-called continuity, the preservation, of the
self. Even in ordinary life, we can be bereft of the continuity of
consciousness, and with it lose all our real self. This happens when
things that should be remembered — many things indeed in our life
— have to be effaced from consciousness and forgotten through ill
health. Much in ordinary life depends on the continuity of memory. All
that is made possible by the first steps of initiation hangs on the
memory in super-sensible life, on preserving the memory of ordinary
life. Such a memory is indeed possible, and it is brought about
through initiation. All this can be linked to the riddle of death.

When a man passes through death, he has not the identical forces he
acquired by initiation because, when he lays aside the body, he
acquires certain forces through the help of beings of the
super-sensible world. He gains the power to preserve in memory what in
laying aside the body he has forgotten. Here you have the real answer
to the question, “What remains of the experiences of my soul when
I have passed through the gate of death? How does my soul live
on?” That is a question of the greatest importance, and through
the experience of the initiates you have the answer, “The soul
lives on because in its hidden depths there are forces able to hold
fast in memory what has been experienced.” To be immortal means
having the power to preserve in memory the renounced past existence.
That is the real definition of human immortality. Through initiation
we have proof, experienced proof, that forces live in man that can
remind him, after he has laid aside his physical body, of all that he
has experienced in sensory life, and of anything at all that has
happened. In this way the human self is preserved into the future;
thus man experiences his former existence as memories in his future
life. We should feel the whole power of the thought that is called
forth by initiation, that could be expressed in the words, “The
human being is of such a nature that he bears his own being through
future ages by the force of super-sensible memory.” If you feel
this thought pouring with feeling into the void of the universe,
picturing the soul as it carries its own being through eternity, then
you have a far better definition of what is called a monad than can be
given through any philosophical concepts. Then you will feel what a
monad is, that is, a self-enclosed being, a being carrying itself. It
is only through the experiences of initiation that one can arrive at
such conceptions.

That is only one side of what I have been describing to you. We must
consider its first steps more precisely if we want to approach with
feeling what can give us ideas about initiation. Let us assume that a
man has, through an attitude of soul strengthened by thought and
meditation, come to the point of being able to perceive in his etheric
body. This perception is experienced in the body that, in its several
parts, is more closely bound up with the brain, and less closely, for
example, with the hands. The feeling oneself into the etheric body is
experienced in the sensation, “You are being spread out. You are
becoming wider, fleeing out into the boundless spaces of the
universe.” Such is the subjective feeling. This is not, however,
that one rushes headlong into the unreal and the vague; everything
there is concrete life. One lives oneself into the purely concrete,
and in this widening out one comes at the same time to definite
experiences. Except in special circumstances, hardly anyone
accomplishing the first steps of initiation will be spared the
experience of a particular impression or feeling of dread and anxiety,
an experience of being in the vast universe with no firm ground
beneath one's feet, an oppression of the soul. This is the kind of
inner experience one lives through.

But there is something of still greater importance. In ordinary life
we think, we have an idea, one thought suggests another, and we
connect the one thought with the other, combining these perhaps with
feelings, wishes, willing and so forth. In a sound life of the soul,
one will always find it possible to say, “I think this, I feel
that.” Were we unable to speak thus, it would mean a break, a
disturbance, in sound soul life. We widen out, we expand when growing
into the etheric body, but at the same time our thoughts also expand.
When thinking, we lose the sensation of being within ourselves, and we
get the feeling that we are growing into the etheric world that is
permeated with thoughts that think themselves. That arises as an
actual experience. It is as if we ourselves were blotted out and our
thoughts were thinking themselves, as if the feelings we ourselves
have, or that things have, felt themselves, as if we could not do our
willing for ourselves but that all this was awakened and willed in us.
The feeling one has is one of being given up to the objective, to the
world. But, as a rule, another feeling is added. This is another of
the experiences during the first steps of initiation. We have the
feeling that, as we expand and widen out, and our thoughts think
themselves, feelings feel themselves, in the same measure our
consciousness becomes weaker and weaker, more and more toned down, and
our capacity for knowing is deadened.

Now for the soul to go through such experiences, one must allow
something quite definite to enter it. It is necessary for these things
to be grasped by the soul as accurately as possible. For this reason I
have collected a few things — if not the same, of a similar
nature and tending in the same direction — in the book
A Road to Self Knowledge.
If you take it in connection with these lectures, you may gain a good
deal. A quite definite state of soul, produced by oneself, must come
about similar to what I described yesterday. One must practice
self-observation and try to bring home to oneself, without either
mercy or consideration, the really grievous faults one knows oneself
to possess, so that there comes before the soul a feeling, into which
one must live deeply, of how little one corresponds to the great ideal
of humanity. With real force of thought and meditation, one's moral
weakness, all one's weaknesses, must be called up before the soul. So
doing, one will become stronger. What has already begun to be
deadened, what has been described as a kind of fading out of the soul,
brightens up again. It once more begins to be visible.

At this point something can be experienced that finds easy expression
in words, but is oppressive and even disturbing during the first
stages of initiation. These words all apply to the life of soul and
not to life in the body. For anyone who has been led aright into
spiritual worlds, will already have received intimation that there is
no question of external bodily danger. Such a man, if he faithfully
observes the good advice offered him, can remain externally the same
man in life, in spite of the ebb and flow within him of every sort of
pain, torment and disillusion, among which may also be premonitions of
bliss. Such things must be gone into because in them lie the seeds of
a higher vision, of a higher insight. In this way one gradually comes
to recognise that by learning to observe, to perceive and to
experience independently of the physical body — in other words,
learning to live in the etheric body — one grows into the etheric
world in the way described. But in so doing one learns the reason why
this etheric world fades into a kind of unconsciousness. In simple
words we might say, “It does not like me; it does not think me
suited for it.” This deadening, this vanishing away, is merely
the expression for, “They will not let me in!” But in
dwelling on one's faults one grows stronger, and what had begun to
disappear lights up again. This produces, however, the significant
feeling that a super-sensible world of an etheric nature is around
one, but that it may only be entered to a certain degree. It will only
allow one to enter to the degree that one makes oneself increasingly
strong, morally and intellectually. Otherwise, no. And it shows you
this by fading away before you.

That is what is such a strain — so oppressive and sometimes even
grotesque and distorted — this battling for the spiritual world
and the consciousness of how unworthy one is for entrance there. By
continuing to work hard at our self-contemplation and the
strengthening of our attitude of soul through thinking, by meditation,
concentration and permeating oneself with moral impulses, one can
enter ever more and more into the etheric world. This is, after all,
only the first stage of initiation. If we would review the next stage,
we must call attention to a most remarkable phenomenon that really has
no parallel in ordinary sensory existence.

The body that man lives in when once he can perceive the etheric world
is his etheric body. But this he already possessed before. The
difference between his etheric body before and after super-sensible
observation is only that through initiation the etheric body is as it
were awakened. While before it was as though asleep, afterward it is
awakened. That is really the most apt expression one can use. But one
thing will be noticed, that, when by means of any particular measure
that has taken effect in the life of the souls the faculty has been
acquired of seeing some fact or being of the etheric world —
well, you then see just this being. Assume that you are so far
prepared that you see this one being, or perhaps also a second being.
Then, if you maintain the same power, you will probably see the two
beings — or one of them — again and again. This is not
difficult. But you will not easily see anything more. If you let the
matter rest for awhile and then come back to it, you will still only
see the same. In short, the etheric world is not like the physical
world. Once the eyes are prepared for the physical world, they see all
that it is possible to see; if the ears are prepared, they hear
everything equally well. It is not so, however, in the etheric world.
There you must keep preparing anew, from one kind of being to another
kind of being and, bit by bit, the parts of the etheric body. There
you must look for the whole world again, and you must awaken your
etheric body for every single human being over and over again. You set
up a connection, a relation, with what you have once seen, for which
you have once awakened your etheric body, and must always go on
awakening new relations. The etheric body alone cannot do this. It
cannot control itself and can only keep on returning to the same
being, or it can wait until it is prepared for seeing other beings.

A man who has taken the first steps toward initiation and has reached
the point of seeing some being or process cannot at once find his
bearings in the spiritual world; he cannot freely compare one being
with another because he has no free access to the beings. If you are
to find your bearings, if you are not merely to look at things but are
to say with decision, “This is a being or that is a
process,” then you must be able to compare whichever it is with
other beings and processes of the super-sensible world. You must be
able to make your way from one to the other; you must be able to find
your bearings. This orientation has to be learned, and we learn it
through regular meditation and by permeating ourselves with moral
impulses. Then we feel growing within us forces the activity of which
we experience as something strange. If we would describe this, we must
return to what was said before. The etheric body, though present in
ordinary life, is asleep, and for super-sensible perception must be
awakened. But the forces with which to awaken it must be there in the
soul. What is done here is experienced in a special way. I can only
make this clear by means of a comparison.

Imagine that you go to sleep and that you know, “My body is lying
in bed; I cannot move it but I know it is there! I am going into the
spiritual world, but I shall come back soon to wake this body up
again.” This can happen consciously, but in the case of a man in
ordinary life it happens unconsciously. He really goes through what I
have just been describing. In his physical condition he is both a
waking and a sleeping being and it is he himself who wakes his
physical body, although he is not conscious that this is so. But a man
who has taken the first steps toward initiation becomes conscious of
this, and thereafter actually knows, “There is my etheric
body.” His attitude toward it is such that he feels, “That
is the more narrowly confined part that corresponds to the brain; this
is the more mobile part corresponding to the hands; this, the
completely mobile part corresponding to the feet.” This, however,
may sound strange. We know all this but the knowledge sleeps in us.

By further development, by preparing our inner life of soul in the
necessary way and reaching up to the spiritual world, we are
continually awakened. First we awaken this bit, then that. Now we set
this movement going, then another. In short, it is a conscious
awakening of the etheric body, so that we may speak of the sleeping
state as being the ordinary state of the etheric body, and of a waking
state into which it is brought by initiation. That is the difference
between sleeping and waking in the physical body and in the etheric
body. In the physical body sleeping and waking are alternating
conditions, they occur in turn; while in the etheric body there is no
such alternation; in it sleeping and waking are simultaneous. Thus, a
man on the way to initiation may, by his first efforts, reach the
point of awakening many of the etheric parts of his head, while all
that corresponds to his hands and feet is still deep asleep. Whereas
the physical body is asleep at one time, awake at another, in the
etheric body some parts are awake and others asleep at the same time.
Progress consists in making the sleeping parts more and more into
waking ones, and that is what we actually are doing.

If man were not a spiritual being, all that I have here put forward as
a comparison could not take place; then, as he lay in bed, he could
not observe the awakening of his physical body. But what belongs to
the soul is something that is independent of what is awakened. What
awakens it bit by bit is not the etheric body, it is something else.
If we grasp the concept, “There is something in my soul that
holds active sway over my etheric body, and bit by bit awakens
it,” we then have a concrete and correct idea of the so-called
astral body. To live in the astral body, to experience oneself in the
astral body, means in the first place that one feels oneself to be a
kind of inner forceful being, gradually able bit by bit to awaken
conscious life in the sleeping etheric body. So there is a condition
that may be described as one in which we experience ourselves outside
the physical body, not only in the etheric body but also in the astral
body.

In order to be clear about this step in initiation, it is necessary to
acquire the power of differentiating between the various merely inward
experiences in coming down into the etheric body. I have described
what is experienced on entering the etheric body, how you expand, flow
out. That is the concrete feeling. But the chief feeling generally
experienced is that you are also pressing further and further out of
your physical body and pouring yourself out into the wide spaces of
the universe — the living oneself into the astral body, the
conscious living into what is bit by bit awakening the etheric body.
This is all linked up, too, with a springing out of oneself to seize
something outside; this is not a mere expansion of something already
there One realises when in the etheric body that the physical body
still belongs to it. But when one makes one's way into the astral
body, one realises, “It is as if I had first lived in myself, and
had then come out of myself to penetrate into something else; now my
physical body, and perhaps my etheric body, too, is something outside
me. I am now in something where I was not wont to be; my physical body
has now become objective and no longer subjective. I am looking at it
from outside.”

This springing beyond oneself, this looking at and understanding
oneself, is the crossing over to life in the astral body. When this is
attained, when this leap over has been made and you know this is now
you and that you are looking at yourself, just as you used to look at
a plant or a stone, you will then have the feeling that, indeed, no
one will fail to have in the first stages of initiation, “Now you
are in the super-sensible world, and you are spreading yourself out,
away into infinity.” One cannot use the expression on all sides
because the super-sensible world has many more sides and quite
different dimensions from those of the ordinary world. But you are
alone there. You are with your life in the astral body and everywhere
around is the universe, an infinite expansion, not any being anywhere
but yourself alone! You are overcome by a feeling of what may be
called loneliness of soul raised to its supreme degree.

It is a matter of enduring such feelings and of being able to go
through them because it is by surmounting them that the forces arise
that lead one on; they become the forces of the seer. What I have
tried to put in a few lines in the drama
The Guardian of the Threshold
becomes intensely real. I refer to the scene in which
Maria leads Johannes into the infinite tracts of the fields of ice
where the human soul is alone — in absolute loneliness. In this
loneliness one has to wait — patiently wait. Much depends on
whether one is able to wait, whether one has acquired sufficient moral
force to wait. Then comes something of which it may be said,
“Yes, you are absolutely alone in infinity, but in you there
arises something like pure memories that yet are no memories.” I
say, “Like memories that are no memories” because all our
memories in ordinary life are such that we can recall anything with
which we once came into contact, anything we once experienced. But
imagine that you stand there with all that is innermost in your soul,
while images keep rising up within you that need to be related to
something. But you have never previously experienced them! You know
that these images are related to beings, but you have never met these
beings. This surging up within you of an unknown world, which you
realise you bear within you as pure image — this is the next
experience on the path of initiation.

After that comes a strange experience in which it is possible to get
into relation with all the images that arise, that you can love and
hate them, that you can feel reverence in face of one, pride in face
of another. Not only a number of inner images are awakened, but also
something like a surging hither and thither of super-sensible feelings
and sensations. You are utterly alone with yourself, alone with your
own inner world rising up within you. At first you are aware of
nothing except an indefinite gloom, but your connection with
everything is complete.

Let us take a characteristic example. Something that rises there as a
picture calls forth your love. This is a severe temptation; a terrible
temptation now arises because you love something in yourself. You are
exposed to the temptation of loving the thing because it is yours, and
you must now put forth all your strength not to love this being just
because it is yours, but, in spite of the fact that it is yours, to
love it for some quality it possesses. It becomes your task to make
selfless what is in yourself. That is a hard task, a task with which
nothing can be compared that has to do with the soul in the ordinary
physical world. In the ordinary sensory existence it is quite
impossible for a man to love what is within him absolutely selflessly.
But that is what he must do on rising to this world. By irradiating
the being with the force of love, it radiates force itself, and this
makes you feel that “it is trying to get out of you.”

You also notice that the more love you yourself can apply, the more
strength it has to break through something that is like a veil, and to
make its way out into the universe. If you hate it, it also gains
force, but then it strains you apart, presses against you and makes
its way through, as though heart or lungs would force themselves
through the skin of your body. This runs through everything with which
you bring yourself into relation through love and hate. The difference
between the two experiences is that what you love selflessly goes
away, but you feel that you, too, go with it, that it takes you away,
and that you, too, take the same path. What you hate, or anything
toward which you show pride, tears through the veil and disappears
leaving you alone, and you remain in your loneliness. At a certain
stage this difference is strongly marked. You are either taken away or
left behind. If you are taken, you are able to reach the being whose
image you have experienced. You learn to know it.

By this surging up within you of the images of unknown beings with
whom you are nevertheless in relation, you come out of yourself and
meet all these beings whom you learn to know in a second spiritual
world. You live yourself into a world generally called the devachanic
world, the true spiritual world, not the astral world. It is nonsense
to say that through his astral body, which I have described as the
awakener of the etheric body, man enters the astral world. Rather does
he rise into the true spiritual world, into what is called the
spirit-land in my book
Theosophy.
There he meets pure spiritual beings.

Now to know more of these beings in their different orders, and how
they become what is described as the world of the Higher Hierarchies,
whom we have learned to know as rising from the Angels to the
Seraphim, of all this we shall hear more in the next lecture.